In the following essay, Taylor evaluates Walker's use of laughter in The Color Purple, asserting that the novel employs laughter as a shared acknowledgment of pain and camaraderie, rather than lighthearted banter.

They crush and crush your heart; your humor escapes.

—Alice Walker, “Ndebele”

Postmodernism for postmodernism, politics for politics, I'd rather be an ironist than a terrorist.

—Susan Suleiman, Subversive Intent

Indeed, irony in the face of actual torture is arguably less worthwhile than terrorism in the face of a text. And we don't, in any event, always get to choose our contexts or our adversaries.

—Lillian Robinson, “At Play in the Mind-fields”

Perhaps no text more dramatically demonstrates how differently diverse communities of readers construct literary meaning than does The Color Purple...